Examples of songs with a Shepard tone include the ending of The Beatles’ “I Am the Walrus,” the ending of Pink Floyd’s “Echoes,” Franz Ferdinand’s “Always Ascending,” Yellow Magic Orchestra’s “Loom” and Stephin Merritt’s “Man of a Million Faces.” A Shepard tone, named after Roger Shepard, stacks sine waves an octave apart. When the pitch moves up or down, it creates the illusion of a sound that keeps rising or falling forever without actually getting higher or lower.
That endless-staircase effect is also called the Shepard scale. Composers use it to build tension that never resolves. Here are 8 examples in music, plus a few well-known uses outside songs.
1. “I Am the Walrus” (The Beatles)
The ending of “I Am the Walrus” incorporates a Shepard tone. A chord progression built on ascending and descending lines in the bass and strings lines up to create the illusion, so the music seems to climb and sink at the same time.
2. “Echoes” (Pink Floyd)
The ending of “Echoes,” from Pink Floyd’s 1971 album Meddle, features an ascending Shepard tone. It was created with a feedback technique using two tape recorders sharing a single tape, one playing and the other recording.
3. “Always Ascending” (Franz Ferdinand)
Franz Ferdinand’s 2018 song, the title track of the album of the same name, features a rising Shepard tone throughout. The video copies the effect, with the camera apparently rising the whole time.
4. “Loom” (Yellow Magic Orchestra)
On Yellow Magic Orchestra’s 1981 electronic album BGM, the ambient track “Loom” has what Pitchfork called “a patiently ascending, two-minute-long” Shepard tone.
5. “Man of a Million Faces” (Stephin Merritt)
In Stephin Merritt’s 2007 song, composed for NPR’s “Project Song,” the Shepard tone is a key part of the track.
6. For Ann (rising) (James Tenney)
James Tenney’s piece consists entirely of a Shepard tone glissando with gradual modulations. It is the purest example on this list: the whole work is the illusion.
7. Hymnen (Karlheinz Stockhausen)
A section near the end of Stockhausen’s Hymnen incorporates multiple descending Shepard tone glissandos, the opposite direction from most pop examples.
8. in vain (Georg Friedrich Haas)
The Austrian composer Georg Friedrich Haas uses Shepard tones at various points in his orchestral piece in vain.
Where Else It Shows Up: Film, Games and Sound Logos
- Dunkirk: Christopher Nolan’s 2017 film uses a Shepard tone to create a feeling of ever-increasing intensity. He said the score for The Prestige had explored the same idea.
- Super Mario 64: the music on the never-ending stairs in Peach’s Castle uses a slightly modified Shepard scale, so the stairs sound endless as well as look it.
- THX Deep Note: the sound trademark, introduced in 1983, uses a Shepard tone in its opening section.
What Creates the Illusion
Each Shepard tone contains the same note in several octaves at once. As the pitch rises, the top octaves fade out and new low octaves fade in, so your ear follows the upward motion but never reaches the top. Played as a scale, it sounds like it is climbing forever.
Final Thoughts
The Shepard tone is a sound illusion more than a technique, which is why it shows up in rock endings, experimental music and film scores alike. Start with the end of “Echoes” or “Always Ascending” to hear it clearly.
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